I've been bitching and complaining about the game on Dust2.us so I'll say it here: Virtus pro will destroy Swole and its not even close.
The playstyle is unsustainable against top teams as HR showed. Swole didn't just get destroyed because HR are a better team. Swole lost because they played man advantage in an absolutely retarded way, and everything they did was ESEA Rank B level. Absolutely amateur mid takes on Cache, they required four whole players to do a B nade stack where most above average teams only need three. They peek everything like a motherfucker and that will not fucking work on LAN. I'm tired of watching SP hold an angle as players walk in and then they wide swing into a holding AWP. Come on. You can tell when a team doesn't watch any demos at all and Swole is one of those teams.

People like to pick on Virtus pro and say shit like "Vireo would beat Virtus pro" but that is so fucking false. Virtus pro are trash but VP would literally make pro league in North America. That's how bad the competition is. When VP can beat C9, and Swole in no universe can beat C9, what is to be expected of Swole? I love the team, but after watching eUnited, a team that has been improving, has the required infrastructure and means to improve their gameplay, I've just gotten really tired of Swole. It would have been great if they had a coach, someone to review demos, point out mistakes, and suggest how to fix them. But they dont even have that. So its just 5 friends who are really good in pugs and NA MDL is just a pug league that you can run and wideswing everyone in and still win. This has been going on for a year now in multiple iterations of Swole Patrol and the team has never taken a step back and looked at themselves to see what needs to be done outside of removing players.
They're not gonna get a better roster than this and they are still failing on the international stage.

I am pretty sure you're so frustrated at this point. Proving a point that actually follows a line of logic in so many lines just to see VP completely play like trolls and get trashed by a relatively weaker team is disappointing.

Swole played a much better and more LAN friendly game this time around. I was surprised by their amount of discipline. Zellsis said yesterday that they only got 3 hours of sleep from a 20+ hour flight to Russia so maybe that had something to do with it? I don't know how it didn't influence their game vs 5POWER though.
I'm happy they made the main event but the complaints I made still stand. Forget Swole doing anything at EPICENTER (I hope they do) but changes in their gameplay and gamestyle still need to be fixed or they'll end up getting swallowed at Global Challenge LAN. I hope this is the beginning of something new for them. I'm really sick and tired of watching NA MDL teams be really strong in their own league, but when it comes to global challenge LAN, it feels like ESEA just took five faceit level 7 players and pit them against semi pros.